This online feature outlines the most common techniques for making prints, and the Met will add the same for drawings in spring 2019. Through the descriptions of each technique, as well as the animated images and illustrative works from The Met collection, you will be able to learn the ways prints are made—from the earliest employed techniques of woodcut, engraving, and etching, to those such as lithography and screenprinting, which came into common use more recently. All of these techniques are still employed by artists today, in much the same way they were hundreds of years ago.
This project was made possible by the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies at Columbia University.